The End of Days

0730 came with a silence.

 Johnny was standing motionless waiting for the whistle to go over but there was a long moment of nothing. His mind was blank. This was it. He was in limbo waiting for the end, which wasn’t quite here yet. For the first time in the weeks since the bombardment started, Johnny heard a small songbird suddenly burst into song, the glorious virtuosic refrain of a summer morning. But this was no summer morning; this was the end.

The high-pitched sound of the whistle to advance, pierced through his motionless state, like the piercing of a large blunt needle invading tender skin. He found his foreboding disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and his excitement flooded over in time with Billy and the other men in the trench, as they all cried out a threatening, exhilarating cry, ascending up the ladders and over the top. 

They had been ordered to walk at a steady pace towards the enemy, to maintain order. The world around him glowed, radiating an eternal spiritual light as he marched triumphantly, with his fellows across no man’s land. There might as well have been lines of angels with trumpets, singing the glory of his step with the brotherhood of soldiers; he was protecting his family, fighting for his king and country. He was proud to be British and finally a man. 

 

He could not tell how long he had been walking, but being so taken up by this triumph over fear, he was prevented from noticing the change in atmosphere. Like the child he still was, Johnny grinned back over his shoulder to Billy, who always had his back. Then, without the slightest warning, a wasp-like bullet hurtled at them, just skimming where Johnny’s head had been only moments ago and embedded itself deep in Billy’s neck. His fast aging hands flew to the place the bullet hit with a sharp slap, as if attempting to swat the poisonous insect from his skin. 

As Johnny watched in dumbstruck horror, Billy’s eyes rolled sickeningly upwards, the whites of his eyes glaring unsympathetically in the morning light, as he crumpled clumsily to the earth. Time seemed to freeze as Johnny watched in horror, as his only link to sanity and safety fell in a pool of blood. There was a long descending whistling from above, ending with a huge explosion that woke the immobilized boy from his state of shock. Instantly, he was turning back to his friend, the one and only thought in his confused mind. He was gaining on the inanimate form when a huge cloud of earth and grass hit him full in the face, knocking him to the ground. When he looked up he was in his nightmare as, wiping the dirt from his face, he found a sticky dark substance mixed in with the grounds of dirt. A dark abyss lay before him where the star had crashed into the point where Billy had been lying.

Dazed, Johnny tentatively climbed to his feet, looking wildly around for his friend. It was not long before the remains of an arm, with that gentle hand, combined with the dark red running down his face, began to make a connection in the boy’s mind. He screamed in pure terror as he rose hysterically to his feet, this time facing an onslaught of locust pellets, hissing and buzzing past him angrily as they missed him. They became more and more persistent as he lumbered closer, clutching his slippery rifle between his quivering hands. 

Eventually one of those ferocious bullets caught him savagely in the shoulder, eating its way deeper into his youthful flesh. 

The lost boy cried in pain falling again to the ground, as the sky spun and stormed around him aggressively mixing the black of the smoke with the greying of the sky. Behind the wisps of repressive grey, a pale moon appeared, taunting him from up in the sky. A dark wave of burning earth rained down on him breathing hot fumes, surrounding him in a cloud of darkness as he lay there helplessly. 

“Move,” a voice shouted mutely in his ear. “Get out of here!” He recognized the voice from the distance of his youth; his mother. “ Stay with your sister, she will help you.” This was someone speaking to him. A memory. A memory of when he watched his mother die, trying to bring his little brother into the world. He remembered what he had seen through the crack of the door; his wonderful mother, whom he had only known for four years of his life, crying out in pain. He had to save her. He could not lose her again. He reached out for her but a monstrous, flame, all consumed by the fiery dragon of his deepest fears suddenly swallowed her. 

“Move!” came a different voice, much clearer and more recognizable. Dove? Where was she? A small distant shadow crossed his vision. It was an eagle; that must be a sign from her. He had to follow her.  The huge grey monster threatening to attack both him and his mother was blocking his escape. Dove called to him again and he followed on hands and knees, gripping the grass between his filth encrusted fingers. As he crawled, explosion after explosion, crashed around him, demanding his worship and attention. “sssix-ssisx- ssssisx,” the bullets chanted, as they sped through the mighty hazy, hill-like explosions. 

His mouth was parched from the dirt and heavy breathing. He panted as he crawled, keeping a rhythm with each gasp of air as he pushed on through the darkness, crumpling every time he used his injured arm. 

Suddenly without warning, he fell with a crash into a small crater hole. It took him a few moments to shake as much of his dazed state off as possible. When he finally began to see more, he realized he was not the hole’s only resident. There was a man sitting right next to him, eyes rolling wildly. Spittle tinged with blood was frothing from his graying lips, as he muttered under his breath. “W-w-water….f-fear god…g-give him… g-g-lor-ry.. w-w… hour of  j-j-judgment h-has come..w-w…” he rambled incessantly. 

Blinking wearily Johnny cast his mind down to his belt where his untouched canteen sat, attached to his army belt. With slow, dead hands, Johnny removed the tin of water and began unscrewing the lid as he offered it in the direction of his companion. The man’s eyes just rolled as he continued. “W-worship him… who h-has m-made… heavens, earth, s-sea and s-s-springs of w-water…w-water- f-fear…” 

The thin, scarred lips ceased their trembling as the mad eyes held the tired boy for a clear moment before death, making way for his last endless breath, as the brightness of life began to fade from the pallid face. Johnny knew that under other circumstances he would have begged him to stay, or frantically poured all the water in his canteen through those parched, cracked lips. Even if he were strong willed enough to care, he would have been unable to feed him. A dead weight began to fall on his limbs, dragging him down into the earth, as if Mother Earth could wait no longer to engulf him and turn him back into the clay from which he was fashioned. 

He sat. Time passed, but he was unaware of it passing him by.

He did not know how long he had been sitting there but his wandering attention was suddenly sharpened by the man next to him, who appeared to have taken on an ethereal glow, radiating light, like the brightest lamp. Squinting against the light, Johnny watched in bemused awe, as the light left the man and ascended face towards the heavens. Then it’s blazing eyes cast down on the lost boy in the shell hole and the look on his face was one of horror as he mouthed the soundless word, “Run.”

The angelic light man disappeared into darkness as the world went black. 

Blood, blood everywhere; on his hands, his face, as it dribbling in a slow arduous journey down the contours of his face, seeping sickeningly into the corners and rivets around his eyes. He screamed but no relief came. He screamed and screamed. Rivers of blood flowed wildly through his mind, as the earth and the sky turned red and flickered like sacrificial flames. He cried for his dead mother, his father his sister, who had been the closest to a mother, but no one came.  The flames flickered off what seemed like seas of glass. There was more burning pain as he opened his eyes, finally ripping their sore lids apart. 

His body was on fire, blisters began to brand their way across the delicate plains of his skin, leaving a blazing trail of fire in their wake. Smoke was everywhere. The darkness started to engulf him again and the dense black mist crept into his lungs, causing a racking cough he barely noticed through the pain of burning.

There was light; an amazing glorious light appearing, with figures all side by side. The angels came closer and closer through the blindness and the fog. As they came into focus he recognized them. On the outside stood his four brothers, all glowing and gazing at him with the protective big brother expressions he only saw on special occasions. Then his father and sister, looking so sad and yet pleased at once. The crumples of his father’s wrinkled face, creased in a tentative smile, contrasting to the smooth expression of his sisters pained expression. What stood out to him most however, was the central figure, radiating light as naturally as breathing, her young kind maternal expression soothing all the pain in his body. Her dancing blue eyes commanded his attention as she leant towards him, breathing her light over his face. 

The apparently solid scene of his family began to fade, as heavy drops of ice rained on him, chilling his body to the bone, bringing his attention back to the crashing and thunderous rumbling of the guns all around him. He was back in the shell hole as the raining hail-like rocks from the explosions continued to pound persistently around him. He needed to escape, leave this abysmal hole. 

The smoke started to swirl and move in a whirlwind around him, giving way to a bright white horse with fiery red eyes, cantering directly at him. As it gained, the iridescent red rider became all too obvious as it leaned to strike him with a burning white sword. Johnny slowly heaved himself from the hole in the ground and crawled. He crawled as fast as he could but the nightmare rider cantered down on him one final time, swinging a violent blow to his head. 

With the strike, the rider vanished and darkness engulfed him once again. This time when he woke it was to a pale silence; cold but at the same time warm. In the distance he could hear the crashing of shells and cracking of the machine gun fire but it was in the distance; clouded in white like his surroundings.  

The memory of his home in the country swam into view. As he looked closer he saw his friends he had seen die so far in the war, Billy in the centre, smiling at him welcomingly. The scene began to move closer like he was flying. How he longed to rest in that beautiful place, with the sun kissing his skin and the sweet smells and noises of the countryside filling his ears and nostrils.

 Then he saw his sister. She was standing apart from the rest of the company and her face did not have the same warming ethereal complexions like those of her companions. She walked closer to him with a look of horror and shock on her face. What was wrong? She came closer obscuring the image of home behind her, as she leaned in to his motionless body. Her usual confident, strong expression he remembered from home, now held the look of pain and sorrow. He did not like it. Charlie had never worn that expression in her life. He felt her ghost like hands brushing his face with feathery lightness, comforting and persistent. She was saying something but he had to concentrate to hear it. Gradually he heard her voice starting to filter through his deafened ears.

“Come.” She was saying. “Come…”